Retail group takes €340m step towards being climate positive
Ingka Group, Ikea’s largest franchisee, has acquired nine solar photo-voltaic park projects in Germany and Spain involving a total investment of €340 million.
The parks have been acquired from solar PV developer, Enerparc. Ingka has acquired four parks in Germany with an expected capacity of 300 megawatts and five parks in Spain which will produce a total of 140 megawatts. The combined output of the acquisitions will be equivalent to the consumption of about 140,000 European households and will be equivalent to the electricity consumption of all IKEA stores and warehouses in the two countries.
Construction of the parks is expected to start at the end of this year and will take approximately six months.
“With our own solar parks and wind farms, we want to make renewable energy available throughout the Ikea value chain and beyond,” says Ingka Investments managing director Krister Mattsson.
Ingka Investments has invested in and committed more than €2.7 billion to renewable energy projects in wind and solar power as part of a €6.5 billion initiative to attain 100% renewable energy consumption across its value chain.
The developments in Germany and Spain are part of Ikea’s commitment to be climate positive by 2030 by which time it plans to have reduced more greenhouse gas emissions than its value chain emits.
Ingka Group already owns and manages 547 wind turbines in 14 countries, 10 solar parks and 935,000 solar panels on the roofs of IKEA stores and warehouses which together produce more than 4 TWh, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of over 1 million European households.
